


The Attic

by Shion Akii (spicyhorses)



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/F, Nostalgia, idk i got sad but then happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyhorses/pseuds/Shion%20Akii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Letting go of the past is hard, so why not just loosen your grip a little?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Attic

Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.     -- _Richard Paul Evans_

 

 

                Summer.

                My favorite time of the year when I was young.

                As I grew older my taste for summer started changing. It became another moment in time where everything was just like all the others.

                That's not to say I don't like it anymore; I do. It's just the fact that there's nothing special about it anymore. Aria and I got married in the winter, so that time is really special to me... but I do miss jumping for joy at the beginning of summer break, going swimming with Aria and her siblings and drinking that really nice peach juice her mom liked to make for us. I miss sitting in Aria's tree house with all of our friends and playing pretend, I miss everything that happened during those perfect summers...

                But what I missed most were the moments Aria and I spent in the attic playing "discoverers" with her dad's map-making tools, reading through old books, and just talking to each other about everything that we could possibly talk about.

                As time wore on, I had to let go of that attic. As we got older, Aria's house wasn't for playing anymore; it was for studying and sleeping over and eating dinners with her family and doing things that teenagers were expected to do.

                Every single summer, my thoughts wandered back to that attic and all of the moments we shared in it. That was the place I told her I loved her. The cushion in the far left corner was the exact spot where I realized the fast pace of my heart wasn't just from playing. I cherished moments like those more than any others.

I just wished I could stay in those moments with her forever. 

\----

                Today was the first day in a long time that I was able to relax at Aria's house without the worry of travel and work. I got lucky that it was in the summer, and I got lucky that her parents were willing to let us stay without having to stress about anything at all. We didn't even have to get dressed if we didn't want to. It was that laid back.

                The weather was amazing. In fact, it was perfect. Aria's family and I had taken the opportunity to go swimming in their backyard pool. Her siblings ranged from 8 to 27 years of age, so the atmosphere was pretty chaotic, what with all the different personalities battling for the attention of one another.

                It was a good kind of chaos, though. It reminded me of the times I'd stay over and this would be normal day-to-day routine.

                Aria and I had revisited the old tree house, which had become weathered and rickety from the 20-something years it had been in that one spot.

                We couldn't get enough of her mom's homemade peach juice, which, no matter what Aria would want you to believe, was far better than any of the other family members' attempts at making it.

                We visited with old neighborhood friends that happened to be visiting at the same time as us.

                We did everything in our power to make this day as nostalgic as possible, but my heart was pulling me to that attic the entire time.

                In the warm evening, around sunset, I decided it was time to see it again.

                I'd asked about it earlier in the day, and apparently not many people have been going up there since Aria and I moved away. Part of me was happy to be able to see it the same as it was when we were young, but part of me was a bit sad as well. Places were meant for making new memories, that's just how it was; but this special place wasn't being used for that at all.

                Despite my mixed feelings, I snuck away from the living room to go up the creaky old ladder and see what I'd been waiting to see for years.

                The sky was just barely turning orange as I crawled up into the large room that held some of my most precious memories. It was exactly as we had left it; maps on the walls and tables, cushions in all the corners, family relics on the shelves...

                As I walked over to the cushion in the far left corner to sit and admire the sunset, I noticed that a note was resting atop the faded red fabric. It had my name written in Aria's handwriting, with a small heart in place of the third stroke of "ka." My heart fluttered as I picked it up, and I had a small smile playing on my lips.

                Unfolding the pieces of notebook paper, I took a deep breath and began to read.

 

_Dear Yukari,_

_I know you've been wanting to come up here for a while, so I told everyone that if you disappeared that this is where you'd be. Hopefully I was right!_

_I'll be up here soon, but in the meantime, just pretend these words are my voice speaking to you, okay?_

_First of all, Yukari, I'm incredibly happy that we've been together for so long. I don't say it a lot, but I really am happy. You mean everything to me and more, and I want you to know that!_

_Remember what you said to me right here on July 20th, 2026? You told me that you loved me and you didn't care who knew. You said: "Aria, I'm in love with you... This is so scary to say! But I am in love with you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you."_

_Do you remember what I said to you? I said: "Yukari... I'm so happy you feel the same!"_

_And you started crying! I could tell you were nervous... and I knew that you were being super brave because you knew how I could've reacted. Your bravery has always been something I admire._

_But either way... when you cried, I held your hand and started crying, too._

_That's how we react to big moments we face together; we both cry._

_When we told our families that we were in love, we cried and held onto each other for dear life when they responded positively._

_On the morning of our wedding, we woke up, took a look at each other and both of us burst into tears with the biggest smiles on our faces._

_I'm not bothered by those tears at all, Yukari. I'm glad I get to share them with you. Otherwise I'd be crying on my own, and that's far more embarrassing to me!_

_What was the point of this letter...? Oh yeah!_

_Other than to gush about how much I love you, this letter was put here to remind you that, even though the days where we came up here and talked and played discoverers and read books and did everything are far away, I remember them just as clearly as if they were happening right now! And we have more memories leading up to this moment and more to come!_

_Yukari, I know you miss being young... I miss it, too, believe me! But being not-so-young is just as good as being young. We may not have the playtime or the days for ourselves as often, but we have new moments that we share every day that make our life so special._

_Old memories aren't the only gold memories!_

_I love you, Yukari. I look forward to making more gold memories with you for the rest of our lives._

_I'll be up there in a minute, okay? We can talk more then!_

_I love you,_

_Aria_ _♡_

 

                By the middle of the letter, tears were streaming down my face and I was gnawing on my lower lip. By the end, I was trying to keep myself from sobbing.

                Aria always knew what to say to get me like this. She was absolutely right; old memories aren't the only gold ones.

                I felt so stupid! How could I have compared those days with the ones now? They were worlds apart, and each were amazing in their own way. Sure, getting older can take a toll on you mentally, but that doesn't mean you stop having a good time altogether. I'd been focusing so much of my energy on remembering the past that I had forgotten to focus on the present. I forgot to focus on the Aria that I was married to, that I loved with all my heart.

                In the midst of my quiet emotional breakdown, I heard a knock on the wall on the other side of the room. I looked up and, just as the letter had said, Aria was standing there with a sad smile on her face. I guess it wasn't as quiet as I had thought.

                The sun was just about to set for the night, and the fiery orange sky illuminated her face as if she were an angel sent to relieve me of the pain I'd felt for so long because I couldn't loosen my grip on the past.

                She tip-toed across the creaky floorboards towards me and sat on the other side of the faded red cushion. Gently taking my trembling hand, Aria pulled me towards her and rested my head on her chest. "You read the letter?" She asked quietly, kissing the top of my head. All I could do was nod. "Do you want to talk about it?"

                It took me a few minutes, but eventually I was able to calm myself enough to speak in a cool and collected way. "I'm so sorry, Aria... For thinking about the past so much."

                "It's not that, silly. I don't want you to apologize." She spoke softly, her smile sweet as ever. "But do you understand what I said? That we're constantly making new memories?" I nodded again. "We are. And I love all of them. Those moments in the past were important to get us where we are today, yeah, and the moments we live day-to-day don't seem as exciting, I know... But they're still _our_ moments. They belong to us and us alone, and I want them to be just as important. They are to me."

                "Aria..."

                "I know you've spent a lot of the past several years wishing we could go back to being teenagers in love without the weight of work and bills on our backs, but I want you to see... I want you to see that even though we're older now, we can still be young and in love. We're only 26, after all! We're not _that_ old." Aria's hand was stroking my hair while the other rubbed my thumb. She always knew how to comfort me. Always.

                I allowed myself a moment to let her words sink in further. My brain was already switching from nostalgic yearning to a brighter perspective of the present. "You're right, Aria. You're absolutely right... I'm not going to waste any more of my time wishing. All I need is you... and I have you. So I don't need to wish anymore." I spoke, more to myself than anything, but Aria's smile grew brighter. I smiled back before taking a look at the attic that surrounded us. Here we were, making a new gold memory in the same place that I thought held my entire heart... When in reality, the places that held my heart were all the places I'd ever been with Aria.

                I didn't need to live in this attic to be happy. I just needed her. That's all it would take to make me happy again. And I was already feeling it.

               "I love you, Yukari." Aria spoke softly before leaning in to kiss me in the gentlest way possible. She was so amazing...

                I kissed her just as gently and gave her hand a squeeze before pulling away. "I love _you_ , Aria."

                We sat there for a few minutes, just staring at each other and smiling before we heard Aria's mom calling us down for dinner. Aria looked at me with a grin before slowly standing with my hand in hers. "Now... How about we teach my brothers and sisters about the wonders of this attic after dinner? No one's come up here in years!"

                I agreed to that, but not before pulling out my phone and taking a selfie of Aria and I in front of that cushion in the far left corner. I took pictures of all the other important spots in the room as well, just to keep those gold memories fresh in my mind while I made new ones with the love of my life.

\----

                As promised, after dinner that night we brought the younger kids in Aria's family up to the attic and showed them all of the cool stuff they could do up there. Two of the 'rebellious' teenagers got bored and left, but the others stayed up there all night, playing and reading and talking; just as Aria and I used to do.

 

                Before we left three days later, Aria and I went back up to the attic and stuck a printed version of our selfie to the corkboard over one of the desks. "To keep us here while we're everywhere else," I had reasoned, and Aria was quick to agree.

                 As we drove away from the house with the entire family waving and saying goodbye, I looked over at Aria and smiled before taking her hand. We had a ton of gold memories to make and cherish from here on out.

 

Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn.     --  _Ralph Waldo Emerson_

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this because i got all nostalgic about childhood stuff but then as I wrote it things became a bit clearer to me????? idk but i'm happy with how it turned out.


End file.
